Fun Friday Resources
/Today we have two articles on writing and the travails of the trades, plus a silly, wonderful, pointless website.
The first, over at Literary Hub is a look at what E.B. White (Charlotte’s Web, Stuart Little, et al.) had to say in various interviews and essays. Lichtenbergians will find a lot they will recognize:
SUCCESSIVE APPROXIMATION: If I write something and feel doubtful about it, I soak it away. The passage of time can help in evaluating it.
AUDIENCE: Anyone who writes down to children is simply wasting his time. You have to write up, not down.
TASK AVOIDANCE: Delay is natural to a writer. He is like a surfer—he bides his time, waits for the perfect wave on which to ride in. Delay is instinctive with him.
His musings on the role of the writer in a chaotic society — he was writing during the tense years of the late 60s — are particularly… piquant, shall we say?… for us today.
And David Moldawer, over at his blog The Maven Game, has a short piece on ABORTIVE ATTEMPTS: artist after artist giving the same advice, “Just do it.”
Lastly, we have the delightful drawafish.com. It does exactly what it says in the title: You draw a fish, and it gets added to the giant aquarium with all the other thousands of newly created fishies. There are more details and rules, but I’ll let you explore those for yourself. If you’re like me, you’ll find yourself responding to the “primitive” sketchpad as a challenge: Can I draw a fish that gets a 100% recognition rating?
Or, you know, just follow all the advice you’ve been given in the two articles. (PRO TIP: Give your fish some distinctive trait or markings so you’ll know it when it swims past.)
